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adequately promoted, and consumers have to be able to find it,

which means securing distribution.

The Selling Era

In the selling era, companies viewed aggressive promotion as the

key to success. Any product can succeed, the thinking went, if a

company just pushed it hard enough. Kotler refers to this as

businesses "selling what they make, rather than making what the

market wants to buy."

This strain of marketing continues in the modern era, particularly

with "unsought goods" – things people may need but don't

normally think of without prompting, such as life insurance.

Selling-era tactics can be risky for companies, as the hard sell can

turn off consumers, perhaps even push them into the arms of a

competitor.

The Marketing Era

The marketing era, which Kotler says started around the mid-

1950s, saw a fundamental shift. Instead of just trying to persuade

consumers to buy the products they were making, companies

focused on making products that customers wanted to buy.

Deciding which products to make and market went from being a

case of "filling a hole in the factory" to one of "filling a hole in the

market." It was in this era that the field of market research really

took off.

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